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  I watched him drain the last of his coffee, and stand up, shifting the newspaper he'd come in with over the crotch of his immaculately tailored suit pants. My eyes flashed up to his and I forced myself not to let my gaze drift down to the bulge I knew was so temptingly close.

  "I hope you'll think about our offer, Ms Harrington."

  I nodded dumbly, bewildered by the man standing in front of me.

  "I think you already know how to get a hold of me, when you've decided."

  My smile twitched. "Call the Bat Phone, right?"

  "Exactly."

  Maxim covered my hand with his and squeezed. The final contact before he walked back out onto the street, and out of my visible world all over again. He was right it made me want to scream.

  CHAPTER 14

  Elizabeth

  We agreed to do it on Wednesday night. Sutherland had a dinner booked. I rearranged my shifts. It had seemed like a great plan when we were texting back and forth and Maxim was talking in circles trying not to put anything explicit or incriminating into words.

  But now I was standing outside the door of the office, holding the key that Sutherland kept in his bedside table and I could feel myself losing my nerve.

  Two deep breaths was all I let myself have. I told myself there was no need to be afraid. Maxim was watching my every move. Pierce wasn't going to find me. And the Russians needed me to do this for them. Maxim needed this.

  The house felt hostile, as though it knew what I was getting up to. It shouldn't have. It should have welcomed every move I made to get the toxic man out of what had once been a home that was full of love.

  One tiny favor, and I'd be well on my way to pulling Pierce's reputation down along with his image. They had photos, Maxim said. Of him hitting me. I could put together a case against him. It was even better mixed in with my documented evidence. They'd lock him away for years. That had to be better than the half-baked plan I'd had with an illegal revolver I hadn't ever even shot.

  And if Maxim believed that was why I wanted those pictures, then good. I'd already have them by the time he figured out I'd killed the man, and was using the evidence he'd given me to convince a jury it was self defense.

  I reckoned my chances were pretty high. But I'd risk any odds for getting revenge on the man who killed my mother. My only regret would be not having more time to get to know Maxim, to see what our lives would have been like together.

  Whichever plan I went with, the only thing holding me back was the web of feelings that was starting to grow for the Russian man who'd put protecting me above doing his duty.

  I'd just have to pack up my infatuation with him, because if I did anything else to encourage him, he might hang around. And I might want him to, and I didn't need anyone trying to convince me to take a better course of action.

  There was no better course.

  He'd killed my mother, and he had to pay for that. As far as I could see, it was an even trade. I'd only be giving him what he deserved. The British legal system wasn't going to do that, no matter how many pictures of my bruised ribs they saw.

  As quietly as I could manage I pulled the door of the office closed behind me, and tiptoed over to the desk. The computer started up with a soft hum that seemed far too loud for the silence of the house.

  Pierce wasn't scheduled to be home for hours. But going through his computer, through every draw in the place, was going to take time.

  He had to have notes, as well as the final copy. Hell, he'd been holed up in here for months working on something. Not to mention all the secretive interviews he gone off to. He's been back and forth in a flurry of taxis for a solid year.

  I relished the times he went out of town too far to travel back in one day and left me the house to myself.

  But today was different. I wasn't turning the radio up and dancing around like he didn't live here, I was meticulously turning over every inch of his personal space to find what Maxim needed.

  I knew he had a notebook that was always on him, and that I couldn't get a hold of, but there would have to be somewhere else he put his findings down.

  I gazed out of the window in despair after I went through the last draw of his desk to find nothing. I'd pulled out every single book from the shelf and put them all back meticulously. I hadn't found so much as a bookmark.

  Maxim had said he'd leave a light on, just as long as the coast was still clear. And it was reassuring to look up and see the glow.

  Pierce kept the computer in here unplugged from the internet, strictly for writing only. The only paranoia he ever entertained was that someone gave enough of a crap about what he wrote to try and steal it. He'd been more concerned about plagiarism rather than anything else, and despite how inflammatory he'd been told repeatedly the information he held was, it never occurred to him that men like Maxim might be out there somewhere trying to prevent the truth from coming.

  He thought he was the British Julian Assange. But he didn't seem to take note of anything beyond how famous he was. Everybody apart from him seemed to see the danger in hurting Russia's global reputation. He was too busy feeling good about himself for whistle blowing and unpicking the mess.

  The boxy hunk of a computer was a relic, with an operating system that crawled, despite the only thing installed on it being a word processing program. It took an age for me to flick through the files, meticulously dragging them through to the pendrive Maxim had given me.

  My foot jogged - an outlet for my nerves as I watched the files transfer painfully slowly, one by one, and I kept glancing up to the window, but from where I was at the computer, the heavy velvet curtain cut the angle off.

  I had to hope that somewhere in amongst the man's multiple attempts at some kind of fantasy novel was the information he needed. I didn't envy Maxim the task of sifting through it. For his sake I hoped he had people who could look through it all, and check for codes of ciphers.

  Not that I thought it was remotely likely Pierce would have done anything a sophisticated as that.

  With the main files transferred, I noticed another couple of web pages saved, which caught my eye because Pierce would have had to go to the effort of connecting the machine to the modem in order to get them on there in the first place.

  Which meant they were out of the ordinary. And that was just what I was after.

  I clicked open the message just as the handle of the door turned, and I looked up from a receipt for a storage locker on the screen, right into Pierce's face.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing in here?"

  His voice reverberated right through me as he powered into the room. I was off stance, too slow, and Pierce picked the paperweight up off the bookshelf right by the door, throwing it hard. It caught me square in the shoulder, and I stumbled back with a sharp shock of pain, losing my footing.

  "Get away from my computer you sneaky little thief!"

  I scrabbled back across the carpet, reaching for the paperweight he'd flung at me as he ripped the pendrive out of the machine.

  "It's over, Pierce. The Russians are coming after you. Did you really think you'd be immune? They're out there. Right now, watching you."

  He started laughing, and I felt my breathing falter. "No one's watching. You sad little girl. Did that tabloid fucker pay you? I always knew you were a little whore. How much? Go on, how much am I worth?"

  "Not a damn penny. And I'd have fucking paid them to ruin you!"

  Pierce growled and I flinched back as he launched himself at me.

  "You will NEVER ruin me!"

  His face was all but purple, the veins in his face bulging as he bellowed, spittle flying through the air towards me. I could only hope he'd give himself a heart attack if he kept going.

  Maxim

  In the opposite building, I was at the window with the light off in the dark, watching the study. I'd killed the lights as soon as Pierce's car dropped him off, and I knew Elizabeth hadn't looked up to see the signal. She was still fiddling with the compu
ter, just out of my line of sight.

  I hadn't waited for him to go inside. Him finding her was bound to happen and there wasn't a single bone in my body that could have stood by and watch him hurt her. I'd vowed it was never going to happen again, and I was a man who stood by his word.

  It had only taken a second for me to bolt for the door, Glock 17 in my inside pocket. I raced down the stairs, shoving open the heavy swing door that led into the building, across the street without so much as a glance around to see who saw.

  I rammed the front door in with my shoulder and when it didn't budge, I shot the lock out. Another thing I had to clean up, another mistake I'd never usually make. I didn't care. I'd have done anything to get Elizabeth out.

  When you were under my protection, I didn't let you down. That was the way it had always been. And I wasn't about to start with her.

  CHAPTER 15

  Elizabeth

  The front door burst in after three heavy thuds, which I realised afterwards must have been Maxim ramming his entire weight against it. The door splintered open and Maxim filled the doorway of the office, his entire body heaving.

  He must have sprinted to get here so fast, and he looked like some kind of avenging angel to me.

  Pierce's grip on my hair loosened and I kicked out, shoving him off.

  The gun Maxim held was unmistakably lethal and my heart notched up a pace.

  I wiped my bloodied nose with the back of my hand, rolling onto my back on the desk, scrabbling to my feet. My ears were ringing like I'd taken a slug to the side of the head - and it took me a minute to remember I had. This wasn't the boxing ring though. And Pierce had tried to-

  The thought made me sick. I refused to let it fully form.

  Maxim growled. "You better say your prayers you motherfucker."

  Pierce’s face was a picture.

  He didn't even have the time to be scared before Maxim dragged him down onto the floor in front of him.

  The beating came hard and fast and I relished every punch to his doughy body. His face was purple and he was wheezing blood, and I knew nothing Maxim did to him would be good enough.

  He levelled the gun on him, and I got to my feet in a scrabbled rush.

  "No! Stop!" My voice wrenched out of me, scorching up the inside of my throat and I could feel my heart thundering in my ears.

  Maxim froze. I saw his arm lock, and he twisted the gun to one side, as though he was visualising the bullet finding its home, but he didn't pull the trigger. His jaw rippled slowly but the frown pulling his eyebrows together didn't lighten as he lowered the gun and looked at me.

  "You want to forgive him?"

  Without another word, I walked over to him and he let me close my hand around his, easing the gun out of his grip.

  "He doesn't deserve it, after all he's done-"

  "I know."

  I looked Maxim in the eye and gradually his frown softened. He gave a short nod and when he stepped back, I levelled the gun on Sutherland myself.

  On the floor, Pierce was barely breathing. Maxim had delivered the beating like the professional that he was and the man on the floor could only groan. He looked pathetic, but I couldn't find an ounce of sympathy in me.

  "I've been waiting years for this, Maxim. I am not going to let you take it from me."

  He met my eyes and nodded, sweeping a hand out in invitation. "Please, be my guest."

  I hadn't known for certain until I reached this point that I had it in me to go through with this, but there was no turning back now, and I didn't want to. I swallowed, breathing slowly as I made sure of my aim, but there was still a shake in my hand, and I growled, trying to get it to stop and failing.

  When Max came up behind me and put his arms around mine, I was glad of the heat from his broad, muscular chest. I felt him still the tremble in me, and Maxim's large hands closed both of mine around the handle of his gun. Steadying my hands completely, he raised it with me, lining it up with Pierce's head.

  His voice curled perfectly into my ear and the heat of his breath made my skin prickle pleasantly. I couldn't believe he was letting me do this. That he was allowing me to follow it through.

  "Breathe out when you squeeze the trigger. Nice and slow."

  I nodded once, and curled my finger feeling the mechanism connect.

  With the silencer on the end of the gun, the whispered shots came out with far more force than I was expecting, and it would have knocked my arm if Max hadn't been there holding me steady, absorbing the shock.

  He stepped back, and I watched the blood blossom from the twin wounds I'd made in the middle of Pierce's forehead. When I breathed out, I felt nothing but a sense of relief.

  Suddenly I was all too aware of the weight of the gun, and my hand dropped down to my side.

  Max took it off me, and I was glad to give it to him.

  "He's gone."

  Nothing else mattered now. I was prepared for whatever consequences I'd have to face. I'd show the world exactly how he'd driven me to it. But I had no idea what came immediately next.

  "Yes," said Max. "He's gone." His tone was low and neutral, but there was a tightness to his voice that I didn't understand.

  In what seemed like a single motion, Max holstered his gun and lifted me into his arms, bundling me in the folds of his coat, as he carried me like some kind of princess right out of the door he'd barrelled his way in through.

  CHAPTER 16

  Maxim

  Sutherland's death wasn't supposed to go down like that.

  It should have been a clean extraction, time to interrogate him thoroughly before the kill shot came. I had plans for making him regret all he'd ever done to Elizabeth. The professional in me would have never killed him there. It wasn't even close to the hit I'd planned, but I couldn't have done anything other than rush in and stop him. It was all inevitable right from the moment he pulled up outside the house.

  The only thing I hadn't predicted was Elizabeth wanting to pull the trigger herself.

  As soon as it was done, I knew I had to get her out of there.

  I knew this city from its rooftops and its gutters. I'd seen all the parts of it that most Londoners chose to ignore and I knew none of them were better than me. I did my duty, made my sacrifice in other people's blood. No questions asked. My soul was already long black, so another face in the shadows to keep me up at night made no difference at all.

  She was different. She didn't need to be involved in the clean up.

  I had a car ready for her in minutes and bundled her into the back of it. Sergei was a loyal driver, never far away when he was needed.

  The card I gave her now was nearly identical to the one I'd given her at the gym, only instead of my name, this one said MT Professional Security Services, and on the back was an address in Knightsbridge in a single neat line.

  If she'd been keeping up with Sutherland's work, she might have recognised the address as one of the buildings he'd been looking into. It was Bratva property, and all of us could do without anybody finding that out.

  I felt nothing when I dug the bullets out of Sutherland's skull and counted the shell casings, making sure there were enough to match the entry wounds, that each one in had a corresponding way out.

  You needed a crematorium or a furnace to burn a body to ash. A domestic house fire wouldn't get hot enough to get through the layers of fat, to char the bone. But it would do for the blood on the carpet, once I'd doused the area with the contents of the man's liquor cabinet.

  The body needed to come out of the house.

  After all the years I'd been doing this, I knew two things. Nobody ever wanted to get involved, and, most of the time they couldn't tell you what they were looking at even when it was right in front of them. People had too much going on in their lives to care what anybody else was getting up to, as long as it looked broadly fine.

  As counter-intuitive as it was, the best thing for me to do with Sutherland was to bandage the gunshots to prevent more oozing and st
uff him into his overcoat before the rigor set in. Better than rolling him up in a carpet and dragging him out, provoking all kinds of questions about removals in the middle of the night and the distinct, lumpen shape of his dead-weight, would be best to put a hat on his head and walk him over the road with my arm under his shoulders, as though he was too inebriated to hold himself up. I had the strength for it, and the stomach. And that was exactly what I did.

  At this time of night, we weren't worth a second glance. The street was empty, all the curtain-twitchers long gone to bed. I took the elevator up to the middle floor of the apartments opposite rather than risking trailing blood up the stairs.

  I dumped him down in the middle of the rooms I'd been watching him from.

  I'd get him out in a roll of wall insulation. Drive him out to one of our associate's facilities. A pig farm out in Essex. Those teeth go straight through bone like butter and they gobble up everything in their way. Coming out as pig shit is the kind of end a man like him deserves.

  Pork's a meat I don't eat any longer.

  Elizabeth

  The building was no business address. The front door opened into a communal hall, and I followed the winding staircase up, through the plushly carpeted hall to the entrance door.

  This was a level up from any apartment building I'd ever been in before. I was almost surprised that the key worked in the lock, but it turned smoothly, and just as Maxim had said, there was the low beep of an alarm.

  I found the entry pad inside like he said, and keyed in the code, holding my breath until the beeping subsided with a double beep of a lower tone.

  Only then did I let myself look around.

  The hallway was broad and spacious with an immaculate hall table with an impossibly shiny wooden top that I didn't dare touch in case of leaving smudge marks all over it.

  At first glance, I thought the place was unoccupied, but as I walked through, I began to notice little things that had been left around, signs of humanity, occupation.